All right. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Corey Tarlow. I am Jefferies' specialty retail analyst, and I'm joined here by Abercrombie & Fitch. We have Fran Horowitz, CEO; Scott Lipesky, COO; and Robert Ball, CFO.
Hi, everybody.
Good morning, everyone.
With that, I'm going to toss it over to Scott for some opening remarks.
Yeah, first off, thanks for being here. Excited to tell our story today. And we have a breakout after this, of course. And thanks, Corey, for being here also. So we put out a release this morning, just a quick high level. We had a record holiday December. When you add up November and December, a record for us on a great quarter last year in Q4. So really excited about how the holiday played out.
We increased our Q4 outlook. We were talking about sales in a 5%- 7% range previously. We've taken that up to a sales up 7%- 8%. When you pull back on that crazy 53rd week from last year, we're going to be around that 13%- 14% growth when you neutralize that. So really excited about Q4 and really ending an amazing year for the company. We're expecting around 15% sales growth for this year and about 15% operating margins, both up strongly to last year, so really excited about the momentum coming through holiday and setting us up for 2025.
Thank you for that. Good morning, everybody. Very excited to be here as well. Thanks for coming to see us this morning. Just a year ago, we sat here and said we had a pretty defining 2023, and that's what we called the year of 2023. We promised and committed to coming back and doing it again, and that's exactly what we did and even better for 2024.
I am just incredibly pleased and confident about, A, where we've been, the work that we've done to rebuild and transform this company, and where we're headed for 2025. With that said, I think Corey has a few questions for us, and we're happy to jump right into it.
Fantastic. So, Fran, with that, could you talk a little bit about Black Friday and holiday? Where did you see any bright spots or some opportunity? And then I think some color by region and banner would also be great too.
Sure. So Scott just said, coming in here today with our release this morning, very pleased to have raised our guidance both for the fourth quarter as well as for the year. Coming in on an awesome year of double-digit increases for both brands. We've seen success across regions, across brands and regions as well. So from a product, which I love to talk about, we're seeing a lot of wins. We headed into the fourth quarter knowing a lot about our product.
We talk consistently about this read and react process that we have at Abercrombie, which really does differentiate us from the competition. So what happened for Abercrombie Adult? We saw for women's, we saw sweaters work, we saw fleece work. Our leading dress business continues to be good. Super excited about how that business has just flourished over the years and continues to grow.
Our Abercrombie men's business, also good fleece and sweaters, lots of good bottoms in men's as well, and then Hollister, really a sensational year for that brand. They are winning in denim, they are winning in fleece, they're winning in sweaters. Again, I could go on and on and on about the product, but lots of good categories, lots of good winnings for the holiday season. Again, a record 2024.
Yeah, just adding on a little bit more of that quantitative. I mentioned it a second ago, but 15% sales growth for the year, 15% operating margins up from around 11% last year, and importantly, our operating income is going to be up almost 50% year over year on that 15% growth in operating margins, so all those wins that Fran talked about across regions and brands really flowing through the P&L in a great way.
That's great. So looking back on 2024, what do you think are some things from a high level that the company got right? And what do you think we can improve on as we look forward?
I guess we'll start with what we got right, because I think we got a lot right. We talk often, Corey, about our playbook. That's something that we've created years ago, which is aligning our product voice and experience. We've now started to export that playbook. So it started pretty much in Abercrombie and domestically, and now our regions are also executing against that and executing quite well.
Our store base, we opened up 120 exciting new experiences last year, 60 of those being new stores and 60 of those being refreshes around the world. I think that was year three of being a net store opener, and our expectation as we head into 2025 is to continue to open up new stores around the world. Lots more of excitement coming from that. In fact, I'm headed to London in just a few weeks.
We're opening up two more terrific stores right in London, right on the corner of Bond Street and Oxford Street, as well as in Covent Garden. What else did we do right? We have amazing brands. We've got global brands that are really resonating. Our marketing is industry leading. We've done a couple of these experiential things this past year that have been just terrific. We just did a big event in Las Vegas for the Formula One event.
We've been doing these feel-good festivals for Hollister, which are surprise concerts in high schools around the country. In just a few weeks, we'll be showing up at the Super Bowl again, bigger and better than we did last year. So lots working for 2024, and our expectation is taking all of those things into 2025 and just building on them.
Yeah, we did have areas for improvement. There's no doubt about that. I mean, in this industry, you have to constantly get better every year and make sure you can comp that comp. And Fran mentioned some of those investments. Investing in the store base, we've been opening new stores. Our stores are highly profitable, highly productive, very different from where they were five years ago.
So we're investing in a big way in both new stores and refreshes. And then on the customer journey, this is so important in this business. Our business is basically 50/50 now between digital and stores, so we need to grow both channels. And we've been investing heavily both in the store business, because it's performing quite well, but also in the digital business, which has been growing and is nicely, nicely profitable. So really happy about those investments.
And our goal every quarter and every month is to come into this business and make it stronger whenever you exit that following quarter. And we've been doing that for multiple years now. Q4 will be another quarter of that. The brands will come out stronger, the company will come out stronger. And that takes us into 2025, but we need to continue to improve, which we will.
It takes them with a lot of momentum.
Yes, it does.
Corey, you've been on this journey with us for quite some time, and many of you in the audience have been on this journey with us, and the transformation that we've undergone just from a financial framework standpoint has been massive over the last handful of years. Coming into the year, sitting here saying 15% top line growth, it's amazing.
But what we're really excited about is what Scott hit on earlier, is the construct that we've got in this operating model is a mid-60s gross margin for the year, 15% around operating margins for the year. What that allows is a massive flow through that top line beat, so incremental sales flowing through the bottom line. To Scott's point earlier, we'll see 15% growth on the top line. We'll see operating margin dollars or operating profit dollars up more than triple that, close to 50% for the year.
So that framework is what kind of sets us up and what gives us a lot of excitement. It throws off a ton of cash. We've got a really strong balance sheet. It allows us to invest into the areas that Scott and Fran touched on. So we're really excited about the framework and how that launches us into 2025.
It's amazing. Fran, I wanted to go back to a comment that you made because you're so focused on product. You talked about sweaters and fleece and denim. How important was product to your success in 2024?
You're pulling at my heartstrings, obviously. And listen, it all starts with product and it starts with the consumer. And that's just where the team has been incredibly focused. A lot of people say it, but we actually do it. We are so close to our customer. Everything is focused on them. We are out with our customer.
That's the most important thing. We are spending time with that consumer, whether that's through teen events, whether that's through the 20-somethings and what they're doing for the weekends. We go away on weekends with them.
We make sure they're truly understanding who they are and what's important to them. That led us to a lot of wins. To your point, Corey, so let's just take collegiate, for example. That was a new business for us this year.
What we heard and listened to is that this teen is very aspirational, whether they're going to college, whether they're thinking about going or not. They love wearing different universities around the country, even regardless of geography. So we listened, we heard, we said, we're going to go after this business. And it has been absolutely terrific. Now, with the whole new calendar of the football, that's even gone on even longer.
And there have been lots of successes that's helped drive that through the fourth quarter. So again, product is the center of everything that we do and staying close to the customer and then making sure our marketing team and our product teams are just aligned and getting that product voice and experience together is just driving this winning formula for us.
Yeah, and it's important over the 10 years, the bigger now, which is pretty insane here.
10 years, yes.
We've built an amazing process around product. We called our Chase model, read and react, pick your term, just in time we use sometimes. And it's all about understanding this consumer and then building a process where you can trigger that product as close to the time they need it as possible. And that's a very different way that we're running the business today than we were five years ago, 10 years ago.
And so as that business has gone up, we started this year in 2024 thinking about a business up mid-single digits and it's going to be close to up 15. We were able to chase into that. And we have a team that is in rhythm across the organization. And we often get the question of, why doesn't everybody chase?
Some people do, but it's really hard. It's very, very difficult. Not only your product teams and your marketing teams, your sourcing teams, your supply chain teams, they need to be running as fast as they can but locking arms. And our team has done a great job doing that.
What we love about this read and react model is not only does it allow us to chase into the upside that Scott's talking about, but it also allows us to do is protect the downside. So we love our operating margin structures. This read and react allows us to lean into the things that are working and lean into the things that we get great reads on and actually step back on the things that don't check out from a testing standpoint. So we love the model. We think it allows us to protect our margins. And again, it's a great place for us to be as an organization.
That's great, so Scott and Robert, you talked a lot about the financial successes of 2024. I'm curious about, and Fran, about 2025 and how you're thinking about 2025 and keeping that growth that you saw in 2024 going into this year.
Yeah, listen, I'll kick off and I'm going to reiterate a little bit of the things I've already said. We have built a very strong global operating model, very different than the company that we used to be, and if you really can understand that we took this company bottom to top and have really changed the whole way that we do business, we've built something that is very sustainable and we're incredibly, incredibly proud of it.
I'll let Robert and Scott get into a little bit more of the detail, but I think the biggest takeaway today is understanding the omnichannel, which is magic for us. We are winning in stores and we're winning in digital and putting those two things together. We're investing very heavily in both of those things, and that's going to continue into 2025. The brands are resonating around the world. It's making us stronger.
We are getting approached by partners all around the world wanting to do business with us. We did talk about two things this year, one licensing deal that we did with Haddad Brands and one with Myntra starting to do business in India. But we are getting approached consistently because we have such strong brands and what opportunities that we have to maybe diversify our model a little bit. So we're thinking about those things and we're investigating those, so to speak. I could keep going on if you guys want to jump in.
Yeah, I'll jump in. Just on that last point, this is something new for Abercrombie. We've always kind of owned it in the past. And we've been talking for years together about strengthening these brands. And if you do strengthen these brands, people start to give you a call. And we're starting to see that at the company. And like Fran said, we've talked about a couple of deals.
And it's really how do we get more exposure to customers around the world, but still focus on the core of our business. So getting great partners like we just signed up in India, obviously a fast-growing market, have our friends, our partners do that for us. So there'll be more of those coming in the future. And it's really a nice diversification of the P&L and of the way we approach customers across the company. So we're loving that.
Taking that construct a little bit more as we go into 2025, just this concept of the flywheel effect. We have this amazing model, a lot of 15s, which is a very good thing in this business, so growing 15% this year, but a 15% operating margin. If we can get that sales, when we get those sales coming on the top line like we did this year, like we did last year, bring more in, the flow through is just amazing, and we can see that profitability, so for us, it's about growing the top line and seeing that expansion on the bottom line, more op income dollars, more EPS, grow that at a rate faster than sales, and all of these things that Fran talked about, our brands today, the way we're going to approach the market in the future will all help that.
And that drives all the money that we're investing. I mean, one of the most important things to walk away today is understanding how much we are investing in the business, whether that's in stores, whether that's in digital, whether that's in our culture, whether that's in our talent. All of that is helping us drive, to your point, 2025, 2026, and 2027 into the future.
Yeah, not every brand has that opportunity today. So there's brands out there investing like us. We are one of them. And so every day when we're making this business stronger, you come out and you separate yourself from people in this industry. And that's what we love about the investment plan that we have today. And we'll continue that into 2025.
I think that's a great segue into my next question because you've driven such tremendous growth at Abercrombie & Fitch Brand, and many people often wonder, can it keep that pace going forward and into 2025, so can you share what you're seeing at the brand and what your expectations might be for future growth?
Listen, our expectation on everything that we just said is to keep this company continuing to grow into the future. The teams are busy at work, making sure that they stay close to that customer and finding those opportunities. The transformation that took place in Abercrombie & Fitch and now what's happening in Hollister are just a testament to exactly how they stay close to the customer and they understand.
The growth is going to come from continuing to be diversified into new categories, new ideas. The cohort for Abercrombie has grown tremendously, so there's a whole world out there of that consumer from, say, early 20s to the early 40s, and same with Hollister. Hollister has a whole global opportunity out there as well.
Yeah, and what I love about where the growth is coming from this year is it's traffic-driven growth. And that's more people coming into both brands. And that's more people coming into both brands on a global scale. So it's not just here in the Americas, which is a big growing part of our business, but it's also in Europe and Asia.
So to continue on, it's about getting more customers. We're laser-focused on growing the customer base. And we've seen that quarter after quarter after quarter. And we'll continue that into the future. And again, that's about this balanced investment plan. We'll be investing in marketing to find them digitally, but also investing in stores to find them in real life. And that's a great way to funnel more customers into your brands.
It's also one of the reasons why we love the brand portfolio that we have. When you think about Abercrombie, it's a brand that's tracking. It's approaching 60%-70% digital, and it's supported by a highly profitable, highly productive smaller store fleet. So when you think about the opportunities within that A&F brand, we're continuing to pour money into digital.
We're continuing to pour money into the experience, but we also have an opportunity to get in front of that 22-40 customer in the Americas. There's a lot of markets that we can get into, open up more new profitable stores, and then in EMEA and the APAC region, our awareness and our penetration is so small that there's worlds of opportunity for us globally, and then on the Hollister side, the Hollister business is on the other end of the spectrum.
It is a 60%-70% stores business, but we all know that that consumer, that teen consumer, is starting their journey on their digital device, so all of the investments that we're making as a corporate entity and to make sure that that experience on the digital side, we can leverage across both of our brands, and then we can pour that cash back in and expand that store footprint.
I like that you touched on Hollister at the end there because that was going to be my next question. It just seems like it's picking momentum now. So what's next for the brand and how do we think about it going forward?
It is picking up momentum. It had an absolutely terrific year. I'm very proud to say in 2022, when the whole teen market took a little bit of a step back, we got to work, Corey, and we've talked about it quite a bit. You can blame weather, you can blame macro, you can do all of that. But the reality is that you own your business and you got to dig in.
And that's exactly what we did. And we addressed some challenges that we had. And we got them back focused on exactly what we do best, running this playbook, making sure that the product voice and experience is all lined up and getting close to that customer.
The team has spent a tremendous amount of time this year, like I mentioned on the collegiate example before, just understanding what is their mindset, what does their year look like, what does their year as a freshman look like, what does their year as a senior look like as they enter the brand at 12 or 13, what does that look like, and I think that there's so many exciting things coming for 2025. I'm not sharing all of them today because we are talking about 2024 today, but I think there's evidence in what we did this year and what we've been able to succeed in and getting close to them that you'll be excited to see some of the things happening for next year.
I'll just add on. We love the teen space. People don't love the teen space so much, but we love that teen space. Our brands right now are in a great place. They're separated. That's something that Fran has talked about for years, separating that Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister brand that used to be fighting in that teen space, kind of fighting each other in the mall. We separated those brands, and now that Hollister business is just laser-focused on the teen, and you gave a couple of the examples, but there is so much happening in a teen's life from 13 to 18.
And we know what they're up against and we know what they're doing, and we want to help them through that time period, so we love having Hollister as this global iconic teen brand, just laser-focused on what's happening for that five to six-year period. We've been very successful more recently. That business has been on quite a run and we're excited about what's next.
And globally too. I know you mentioned globally. You think about, I mean, our business globally also for this teen consumer. That's a huge, wide, addressable market for us, different than the Abercrombie consumer.
That's great. Leads me to my next question on international. How are you thinking about the growth drivers for the international business? And I know you've talked about some of your partnerships, but how fast can you go? And then how do you keep that growth focused?
I mean, I can go. I can go. I can go.
Yeah, I mean, as you think about that international expansion, we've talked about the opportunity that we have in the EMEA market and the APAC market. When you ask the question around how fast do we think we can go, we're really disciplined in terms of how we invest our dollars. There's a massive opportunity for us to redevelop the EMEA market. We've closed some stores.
We've opened some stores here and there. But what you'll start to see in 2025 is kind of leaning back into some of these countries. Fran talked about exporting our playbook. We've been really focused on the U.K. and Germany in that EMEA market. And we're starting to see a lot of traction. And when I talk about discipline when it comes to opening new stores, we've got to see the right levels of productivity.
What we've seen in that business as we've deployed that playbook in that international market is we've seen those productivities improve. We've seen the profitabilities improve to a point where we believe that we've got very, very high levels of productivity in those stores. We're confident now to redeploy some more capital into those regions.
You'll start to see more of that in 2025. In 2024, we've also been on this journey, obviously very large store fleet for the Hollister business. We need to make sure that the experience matches our digital experience and all the investments we've made on the front end there. We've remodeled a number of stores. We've got about 40 remodels coming in 2024 that we've done. You'll continue to see us lean into that existing fleet to make sure that we're modernizing that infrastructure and modernizing that experience for that consumer.
Yeah, this inflection point that Robert covered around kind of the U.K. and Germany is so important. The productivity two, three, four years ago didn't deserve the investment. So we were talking about investments really tilted towards the Americas and growing both store bases there. But unlocking the productivity in the U.K. and Germany, these are big markets where we are wildly underpenetrated across brands.
So there's a lot of investment in the future that's going to bring growth, and I talked a little bit earlier. Let's plant the flag for that store, and then you see that digital halo that comes along with it. So we're really excited about those two countries. And then there's more to go in Europe after that, but we're taking it kind of one country at a time, making sure we are excellent and coming to the market in that country. But it's a super important inflection point for us.
As you think about the narrative for your company and the people who you talk to, what is it about your story that resonates with people? And then where do you think there's still some misunderstanding despite where fundamentals are and the stock price?
I guess I would kick off by saying I think what's pretty incredible is that Scott just said it. I've been sitting here for 10 years driving this company. And there were many, many naysayers in the world who did not believe that we could do what we've done. With that said, we've done more than we even expected that we could do.
To be sitting here with the numbers that we have today, almost $5 billion in business, margins in the mid-60s, an operating margin of 15%, I mean, you just got to take a minute to say, wow, pretty amazing. What is driving that? To your point, Cory, is the most important thing for people to understand.
We have a strong balance sheet. We are investing. We have amazing brands, global brands that are resonating around the world. They're just even getting started.
We have what I like to call magic. Magic is the omni of retail, which is that you have good stores and good digital and those two things to come together and make magic. And you have an omni customer who's your most valuable customer. We have an amazing team. I'll brag about that for a minute. We have an incredible culture.
We have a place where people want to work and work together. It's just, it is a joy every day to drive up to Fitch Path and to be a part of this company. We shared this morning a lot on our press release. I think I've covered the key things. If there's any.
Yeah, just to close it out, it's really we have fundamentally changed this company. It is not the company that it was five years ago, and we have an amazing platform for global growth, and Fran rattled off many of those opportunities, and we have also as we've gone through, but that's the key. This is a different company than we were five years ago. Each brand has momentum coming into 2025. We have a strong investment plan, and we expect growth into the future.
Okay, I'll squeeze in one more.
Okay.
On the bottom line, can you talk through how you're thinking about growth for next year?
Sure. I'll hand that over to Robert.
Yeah, I mean, we've kind of hit on it earlier. But as you think about this construct, we've been through this massive transformation. We've got really solid margin structure. We've got a highly profitable fleet, highly productive fleet, and marginal dollars and marginal sales flow through those stores in a really high way. When you think about that, we've been on this journey of getting this company healthy from a margin structure standpoint.
We believe that we're there. And now we're set up for this platform to take into the future where we believe top-line growth, continue to expect top-line growth next year across brands and regions. That's our jobs, right? And flowing those incremental dollars down through and making sure that that profit is growing at a higher rate than our sales is something that we're all focused on for next year. And we're excited to take it forward.
Fantastic. Any closing remarks from Fran?
I think we just summed it up.
I think we just summed it up. I think we're good. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. And have a great day.
Yeah, thanks everyone.